


Cataclysmic

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Marauders' Era, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-31
Updated: 2007-07-31
Packaged: 2019-01-19 08:20:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12406659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Cataclysm is a noun meaning a large scale and violent event in the natural world. It's origin however, just means to wash away.Lily Evans is a tragic heroine with out the heroics and this is her memoir. A tragedy to be washed away.





	Cataclysmic

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
Author's notes: 1  


* * *

Cataclysmic 

Song- Jenny, you're barely Alive- Rilo Kiley

~

    The definition of a tragedy is an  
event causing great suffering or destruction. If I were to follow that  
definition for these memoirs then it would appear that my life was full of  
nothing but many tragedies. Or perhaps it would appear not to have any such  
event at all. For the purpose of preserving these memories as best I remember  
them, which is perhaps biased and most likely faded and altered, the definition  
of a tragedy I will follow is 'a story dealing with tragic events, having an  
unhappy ending, and usually depicting the downfall of the main character.' 

    I  
suppose that would make me, Lily Evans, the Tragic Heroine.

~

    It's a funny thing watching someone  
fall apart. It's even funnier when you're the one doing the falling. I don't  
really mean in the funny-weird sense, or even the funny-laughing sense, though  
at times it is somewhat like both of those. It's weird, losing your voice from  
crying, feeling lust for a sense of destruction, longing for some blood or some  
pain or even longing for people to feel disgust over it. Over you. It's also  
funny like a dirty joke, or a good friend tripping or maybe more like an  
acquaintance messing up, stuttering during a presentation in class. That really shouldn't be funny, but it  
is feeling? Like you should feel bad as your watching it, and you probably will  
feel bad thinking about it afterwards. It's something that can't be helped,  
laughing at inopportune moments. I have a knack for that. Not for laughing, because  
even now I don't think that will ever truly come naturally. I have a knack for  
the inopportune. 

    Watching  
someone fall apart is... it's not beautiful or romantic, but it can inspire  
things that are. it's not particularly note worthy or shocking but I suppose in  
retrospect, anything is. Watching someone fall apart is just human nature I  
guess. When was the last time you heard the words 'helping someone fall apart',  
or 'stopping someone from falling apart'. I remember, a little after the war  
started, Dorcas Meadows and I were walking through Diagon Alley, Christmas  
shopping or something, and there was this huge crowd around one of the store  
fronts. We pushed our way through as close as we could and just stood there and  
watched.

    The front of the store, an old  
apothecary, which would eventually become Fortescue's, was nearly burnt to the  
ground. There was a horrible  
stench in the air, something strong and pungent, almost rich, but wicked. It's  
acidic, burns your nose when you breathe in. It comes from the burning of  
things, unlike fat and the muscle, which rarely gets burned for cooking. It's  
acidic from organs, and coppery from blood. We didn't know it then, but three  
people had died in the fire. 

    Dorcas and I just stood there on  
the sidewalk, in a crowd of jostling people, breathing in a smell we couldn't  
place and staring at remains of some store we never really paid attention to,  
even while we shopped in it. The most striking thing about that day, standing  
in the snow with my best friend, is the people we stood next to. I remember  
flashes of the unmistakable white blonde hair of Narcissa Black, the bright  
yellows of Hufflepuff scarves and the glint of James Potter's glasses as he  
stared into the smoke. None of us had much in common, or could even stand each other  
on a regular basis, but there we were, staring at the wreckage, much like  
slowing down at the sight of an automobile accident. It was, for some of us,  
the only time we would ever stand on the same side of some perpetual line. 

    That  
is human nature. Tragedy is something we, as people talk about in hushed tones  
for decency, or through tears for mourning. It is something that can bring  
people together. We yell out about it in moral outrage or curse it to the  
heavens out of some sense of propriety. It is that same sense of propriety that  
debars us from ever mentioning the times we spend day dreaming of war,  
romanticizing it, or the fact that we as humans, somewhat revel in pain.

~

    To write a tragedy is a difficult  
thing. To write a good, a perfect tragedy is too complex to undertake by anyone  
short of the philosopher, the politician, the idealist, the poet and  
consequently the person of the age. I am known for none of these things,  
naturally. I was the girl hidden away from the world, the girl with no passion  
for anything or anyone, a girl who was slipping every day further under,  
further away. It seems the reason one does not have to experience a tragedy to  
write one is because it's too fucking difficult to survive it enough to write  
the perfect tragedy. 

    But  
maybe that was before any of this happened. 

~

    A good friend of mine, one who will  
eventually become, if not important, than note worthy to this story, once said  
something to me, something that still stands out from the many worried stares  
or attempted interventions that became almost an indulgence of mine. It took a  
lot to catch my attention when approaching the topic of anything bordering me.  
There was always the familiarity of Dorcas' snappish retort to any hangover or  
fight or one of the many other bad habits I formed of "What is there attractive  
about self destruction Lily?" or Severus Snape's confused looks he'd throw over  
his shoulder the few times after 5th year he allowed me to catch him  
looking down over his nose at me in the halls. 

    Remus Lupin is a cynic. Kind,  
quiet, smart, handsome, but cynical and jaded as a forty-year-old unmarried  
women. It's something that drew us together besides his dark secrets and my  
ulterior motives. However, it was he who eventually woke me up, at least enough  
to survive longer than I would have if put to my own devices. 

    Remus had the strangest eyes, a  
brown or hazel too light to be classified as anything but gold. However  
beautiful they appeared to be, they could look dreadfully scary and violent  
some nights. That night they merely looked tired and they had a shot of dark  
humor in them. Shaking his head as he leaned back against the door he had just  
come through, the guarded one on the 5th floor that conceals to the  
  prefect'sbathroom, he gave a low whistle. 

    "Lily, you're barely alive," he  
said in a voice that sounded nearly impressed and yet patronizing. It was a  
sentence I would never hear again outside of my mind, and one I felt like  
responding to with laughter, however nervous I felt on the inside. At the time,  
I probably groaned and then threw my wand in the general direction of his head  
before proceeding to further empty my stomach contents into the large abyss  
that was the prefect's bathtub. 

    I made sure that for the next  
couple of months, Remus Lupin was not around me again during a low point in my  
life, for he had some how seen past the delicate front I built up for those  
last two years of Hogwarts, when a war waged violently, against me, against  
people I cared about, against the very blood, magical or not, that tended to  
run cold through my veins. He made me sit up and really pay attention for the  
first time since I had yielded myself to the darkness I felt in my soul, to the  
wisps I had been fighting off for most of my life that suddenly appeared stronger  
than I was. 

    Those two years were spent mostly  
in a sort of limbo that was my mind and soul's battle over the indecision that  
waged within me. Most of my 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts  
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was spent in conflict, usually internal,  
however well I had convinced myself otherwise. There was a time period during  
those days darkened by war and the general feeling of dejection, that I felt,  
briefly, completely alive and filled with some strange emotion much of the  
wizarding world had forgotten. Hope. Besides that brief period spent and  
provided by, filled with the overall essence that was James Potter and the  
people he seemed to collect for me, I was barely alive. I was struggling along,  
a straggling muggleborn witch who should have been terrified for her life, who  
was, even before the war fully engaged me, apathetic to it instead. 

    Remus helped me that night to  
realize what I had been denying for almost a year. Even though it would still  
be months until I attempted to pull my life together again and even though it  
would take many more people, many more mistakes and perhaps a twist of James'  
finger, until I was out of the woods, I had recognized some where that hope,  
though it may not spring eternal, it does die last. 

~ 

    Something to understand before  
undertaking this memoir is that this is not about happy endings. This is about  
what happens when you are given a bad beginning and a path that can only lead  
to a bad ending. This is not about the war I have been living through, nor is  
it an epic tale of survival. This is about enduring more than I believed I  
could and having something to give me strength when I didn't have enough of my  
own. This is not a love story. Though I came to love passionately and it  
changed my life and perhaps helped to save me, a boy cannot fix everything  
wrong in your world and love cannot conquer all. 

    his is simply a tale of a girl  
during a time in her life that she doesn't particularly feel like reliving.  
This is about her experiences, about the truth that is out there. It is about a  
girl who had a bad beginning and a few bad endings and is trying to forge her  
own path. It is about a girl who lives during a war and who is trying to endure  
the best her and her friends know how. It is about a girl who fell in love at  
the wrong time and lived enough to try. This is in many aspects a tragedy. 

    But this  
girl, she is, I am trying. That is all I can do and it's all I will continue to  
do. I will try. 

~~~~

A/N: So this may seem disjointed and plotless, however (yes,  
I did write the parts separately and in different orders) this is just a  
prologue to what I plan to be a 30 or so chapter story about the madness that  
was Lily Evans mind. With the 1st chapter, the story will actually  
start and the characters and plot will be introduced correctly. This is more  
just a taste of what the story is about (and not about) and what befalls Lily  
along the way. The next chapter, if all goes as planned, should be posted in about  
3 weeks time. So I hope you enjoy and feel free (please) to constructively  
criticize me/this. 


End file.
